This is the blog which was written all the way through the Sab. This was what the Sab was supposed to be about.
It was a kind of sort of slight coincidence that the sabbatical fell over my 45th birthday. I have been working as a qualified dentist for more than 23 years, the same again would be put me at 68 and most people are about done by then, if they make it there at all.
For one reason or another I get the chance to think about what is next for the second phase of my career. I hope it is not the last, I hope I am writing a blog in 23 years talking about what I an going to to with the final 17 years before I retire at 85.
So what next from here.
The survival and prosperity of dentistry as a profession is juxtaposed between what we need to remember for the past and what me must learn and adopt for the future.
From the past we must return to "do no harm" and embrace our status as surgeons and healthcare providers, otherwise we become beauty therapists in an overcrowded market place which is ambiguous and confused and hopelessly commercialised to the point of saturation.
Our "USP", as it has always been, is our closeness and affinity with medicine and the privilege of the social contract that we are bestowed in leau of our agreement to be caring, altruistic and honest pseudo medics. To ignore this arrangement is to break that contract with society and to do so is to give up the elevated status of occupying a position of a profession.
Sadly this is visible in many areas of dentistry and I feel a deep responsibility to re-establish this and protect it.
For the future we must learn to honestly evaluate the new and often amazing technologies that are coming on stream with the potential in many cases to truly improve the lives of our patients. We must be wise though to take advice on these products and technologies form the right places for the right reasons. The suppliers of such "magical wands" are not always what they seem.
For the patients we must see them as a life long project and for those at the same age or younger than us, we must see their care as something we have the custody of for only a short period of time before we pass this onto someone else. We must understand entirely that care will come after we’re finished and we must make that as straight forward, simple and understandable as we can for the patients.
For our teams we must develop the individuals to the highest possible standard to give them the best chances in society and the best chances in the profession. When members of our team leave for better opportunities in other places we must celebrate this as we have truly done something good. This will happen and it’s an inevitability of development.
When your associate leaves to set up a practice of his own in the same town you should see this as a compliment in the way you have looked after him.
As the world becomes more complicates, as it inevitably will, we must secure time outside of work to renew us and to recover and relax to allow us to be the best people we can be in the care of our patients ‘You can’t drink from an empty cup’
In the end we have to look after ourselves, look after the people who look after us and look after our patients and set an example that means everyone else moves towards that same philosophy for the profession itself to survive for any considerable time into the future.
Blog Post Number - 1255
Leave a comment